Le Cinesi (The Chinese Women) and Apollo and Hyacinth

Christoph Willibald Gluck
LE CINESI
Libretto by Pietro Metastasio
English translation by Murray Hipkin

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
APOLLO AND HYACINTH
Libretto by P. Rufinus Widl
English translation by Gilly French
and Jeremy Gray

Whichford House, 17 June 2008
The Orangery terrace, Westonbirt, 24 and 25 August 2008
Music at Wotton, 4 October 2008

Cast

The Bampton Classical Players, on period instruments

Persephone Gibbs, Camilla Scarlett violin; Alexandria Laurence, Malgosia Ziemkewitz viola; Emily Robinson ‘cello; Kate Aldridge double bass; Hannah Riddell flute; Mark Radcliffe, Joel Raymond oboe; Kate Goldsmith, Alistair Rycroft horn.

Synopses

Le Cinesi

Le cinesi presents a salutary lesson in how best to alleviate boredom.  Three Chinese ladies, confined in the womens' quarters but illicitly joined by a young man newly returned from Europe, decide that play-acting might be a fashionable and novel form of amusement.  Following an argument about which genre is most appropriate, Silango proposes that each of them should present a contrasting scene to the others. Lisinga plays Andromache in a tragic scene from ancient Greece.  Sivene chooses a pastoral theme: as Licoris the shepherdess she urges her ardent lover, Thyrsis (a role assumed by Silango) to control his amorous urges or lose her affections. Jealous Tangia pokes fun at Silango’s European affectations in a satirical monologue by a young fop who believes himself irresistible to all women.  A heated debate ensues in which tragedy is judged too exaggerated, pastoral too cloying, and comedy too offensive.  Silango diplomatically proposes that the ladies abandon their dramatic aspirations and learn to dance instead.

Apollo and Hyacinth

Act 1
Preparations are being undertaken by Hyacinth, son of King Oebalus, for an important sacrifice to the god Apollo. His friend Zephyr, who claims to plan to marry Hyacinth’s sister Melia, is nevertheless insanely jealous of Hyacinth’s obsession with Apollo and makes unwelcome advances to him. King Oebalus and Melia arrive, but a thunderstorm suddenly disrupts the ceremony and is taken as a sign of Apollo’s displeasure. Oebalus blames his children, but Hyacinth suspects Zephyr’s blasphemy. Hyacinth attempts to calm the mood by explaining the capricious but ultimately friendly ways of the gods.

Apollo, who has been banished by his father Jupiter, appears disguised as a shepherd, and asks for protection in Oebalus’ kingdom. He reveals his identity and allows Melia to fall in love with him, but also arouses the jealousy of Zephyr by embracing Hyacinth.

Act 2
Oebalus announces to Melia’s intense delight that Apollo has requested her hand in marriage. Melia wonders where Apollo is, and is told that he is throwing the discus with Hyacinth. She sings in praise of her own fame and happiness. Zephyr brings the news that Hyacinth has been felled by the discus thrown by Apollo. Incredulous, Melia is ordered by her father to banish Apollo. Zephyr learns for the first time that Melia is now engaged to Apollo and attempts to win her back for himself, proclaiming the many faults of the ‘murderer’. Melia is too distraught to accept him. Apollo encounters Zephyr and angrily has him carried away by the winds. Melia refuses to listen to Apollo’s pleading, taking him to be a double murderer, and banishes him.

Act 3
Oebalus finds the body of Hyacinth, who with his dying breath reveals that it was Zephyr who killed him, out of revenge for his obsessive friendship with Apollo. Oebalus is distraught. Melia arrives, and she and her father express their horror at their error and their behaviour to Apollo. The god nevertheless returns and, through his love of Hyacinth, transforms him into a flower. Apologies are made, and Apollo and Melia resume their engagement to general rejoicing.

Synopses - Cast - Drinking tea in various attitudes of deep abstraction
Love, love, love is the soul of genius
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“Drinking tea in various attitudes of deep abstraction”

In the current economic climate of recession and a stagnant housing market, frustrated estate agents might wonder with bemusement at the efforts made in 1754 to effect a lucrative sale for the handsome Schlosshof an der March, one of the finest country house estates in the environs of Vienna.  It had recently been enlarged by its owner, the Imperial Field-Marshal Prince Joseph Friedrich of Sachsen-Hildburghausen, and he could hardly fail to be aware that the reputation of its improved charms had attracted the attention of the Empress Maria Theresa.  When it was announced that the Imperial family would pay a four-day visit in September, the Prince began to plan a series of entertainments that would not only demonstrate his own creative largesse but which would also show off his property in the best possible light. 

The Prince maintained a fine theatre and a justifiably famous musical establishment, and in Giuseppe Bonno (1711-1788), his Kapellmeister who was also Imperial court composer, he had a composer of sophistication and merit.  The plans drawn up for the delectation of the royal family took months of careful preparation and resulted in a three-day extravagance which has been called the “last Baroque celebration in Austria”.  Bonno composed two new opera-serenades to texts by Pietro Metastasio (1698-1782), the influential Caesarian court poet, and both were to make a strong impression on the royal visitors, the Emperor Francis and Empress Maria Theresa, their four children and a significant entourage of courtiers.  Il vero omaggio was performed in the garden Heckentheater on the afternoon of the party’s arrival and included a spectacular echo-symphony with horns, trumpets and woodwind concealed in the gardens some distance from the main band.  The work concluded with a ravishing duet for the famous court singers, Vittoria Tesi-Tramontini and Theresa Heinisch, who were suddenly joined by the voices of village men, women and children again secretly hidden in the wooded groves around the theatre, who, a report tells, “joined in perfectly with the orchestra and actresses without the slightest dissonance and in Italian as clearly and distinctly as native Italians” – “even the smallest children, aged seven or eight, sang out so expressively with full voice and extremely sweetly, that they quite touched the hearts of all present.”  Bonno’s second opera, L’isola disabitata, followed that same evening in the impressive Schlosstheater which was seductively decorated with trompe l’oeil paintings so that the actual audience felt as if they were surrounded by crowds of additional spectators dressed in masks.

The same theatre was the venue for the third musical entertainment, Le cinesi (The Chinese Ladies), performed the following day, 24th September.  Again Metastasio was the librettist, but the music was composed by Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787), who had been appointed leader of Prince Joseph’s orchestra on his return from Italy late in 1752.  The choice of libretto was critical in the scheme to flatter the Empress since she herself had sung the role of Lisinga nineteen years earlier in a first version of the script, set to music by Antonio Caldara – indeed, it may have been Maria Theresa herself who suggested the libretto as suitable for the Schlosshof entertainment.  Metastasio had already revised the libretto in 1751 for a Spanish court production with music by Nicola Conforto, at which point he introduced a male character to complement the original three female roles.  It was this expanded version which became the basis of Gluck’s one-act miniature ‘azione teatrale’. It was Gluck’s nearest approach to the tradition of Italian comedy and, in its modest way, a masterpiece.

The theme of this occasional piece is typical of a wave of indulgence for exotic chinoiserie which swept through aristocratic and royal Europe in the mid-eighteenth century.  In England, its most famous manifestation is the Pagoda of 1761 at Kew for the Princess Augusta, and its architect William Chambers had twice visited ‘Cathay’, recording his impressions in his Designs of Chinese Buildings, Furniture, Dresses, Machines and Utensils published in 1757.  In fact most mid-century chinoiserie was merely an exoticized version of European rococo classicism and relied on the application of lattices, bells and dragons to designs which were orthodoxly classical in structure and symmetry. The delectable Chinese paintings of Francois Boucher, such as La peche chinoise and Le jardin chinois, are typical of this make-believe orientalism with their languid poses and shimmering air.

Le cinesi is therefore very much a child of fashion, and we need not expect much by way of oriental authenticity.  Metastasio’s slight story “takes place in a city in China” in “a room decorated in Chinese style, with a table and four chairs”.  It is a domestic comedy of manners and etiquette, in which the boredom of Lisinga and her two female friends (the libretto specifies that they are “drinking tea in various attitudes of deep abstraction”) leads to a sequence of homespun entertainments, a medley of contrasted European dramatic (that is to say, operatic) pieces – as Silango, the only male character, observes, “this art is common only in European countries; here in the East it’s still strange to us Chinese”. 

How these Chinese ladies might have known the European stories which they enact for each other’s entertainment is not made clear.  Lisinga is first to perform, presenting the heroic classical tragedy of Hector’s widow, Andromache, forced to choose between the life of her small son and the depraved love of Pyrrhus.  Lisinga’s brother Silango and Sivene act out a rustic flirtation as shepherd and shepherdess, and finally the envious Tangia satirizes this attachment in a comic scene about a Parisian dandy preening himself at his mirror.  Thus are neatly presented three genres of eighteenth-century opera – seria, pastorale, and buffa.  Le cinesi, far from being a piece of orientalism, is in fact an early example of the genre of opera-about-opera – a clashing juxtaposition of styles within a domestic setting which almost anticipates Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos.

We know from a detailed account by the young assistant and violinist at Schlosshof, Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf (1739-1799) that Gluck introduced small percussion instruments (not notated in the score) as a colouristic quasi-oriental effect – “little bells, triangles, small tambourines and cymbals, and the like” – into the energetic Neapolitan-style overture.  They were also used in the final danced quartet, set as a polonaise which would seem more exotic than a predictable Viennese minuet.  This was intended as an invitation to the royal audience, encouraging “the most eminent guests to proceed to the brilliantly illuminated hall in the palace, decorated with many, many mirrors as well as crystal chandeliers and sconces” where, according to Dittersdorf, they danced for many hours. 
Most of the orientalism of the production was conveyed by the scenery and props which, according to Dittersdorf’s report, must have been highly impressive, involving the handiwork of “lacquerers, sculptors and gilders” as well as Bohemian glassworkers who produced a ravishing effect with numerous glass rods, filled with coloured oils to create a shimmering prismatic light. 

However slight the story, it is related with warmth and good-humour, and elevated by the considerable quality of the music. Mindful of the important occasion and inspired by a cast of outstanding singers, Gluck created a sequence of finely-characterised and contrasted numbers – overture, four arias and an ensemble – which show him at the height of his creative powers.  For Vittoria Tesi-Tramontini, a soprano “already over fifty years old but very well preserved and agreeable”, he wrote the role of Lisinga, which in the Caldara original had been sung by the young Maria Theresa.  In an extended scena he moves from secco recitativo to accompagnato, until in the B minor aria itself (which tellingly lacks the traditional da capo repeat and breaks off at the climax) he adds woodwind to convey the intense moral dilemma of the agonised Andromache.  The two major-key pastoral arias, in which Silango and Sivene act out the half-playful, half-serious love of Thyrsis and Licoris, are more conventional in structure and written for strings alone, but each is a model of sensitivity to text and character. Tangia’s parodic number is intended to goad Silango, and brilliantly conveys the swagger and affectation of male vanity.

Gluck was well rewarded for his work, receiving a generous fee of 100 ducats and a gold snuff-box from the Imperial couple.  More importantly it led to his promotion at the Court and a gradual succession of commissions and opportunities.  And as for Prince Joseph’s private agenda to sell his property, the Empress was enchanted with the whole sojourn – and so she bought the Schlosshof as a gift for her husband for the princely sum of 400,000 guilders.

Synopses - Cast - Drinking tea in various attitudes of deep abstraction
Love, love, love is the soul of genius
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“Love, love, love is the soul of genius” (Mozart)

“I am also informed that the Prince of Saltzbourg, not crediting that such masterly compositions were really those of a child, shut him up for a week, during which he was not permitted to see anyone, and was left only with music paper, and the words of an oratorio.”  Daines Barrington, report to the Royal Society, London, 1769

Mozart’s first true opera is by any standards a remarkable achievement.  Having recently written two substantial dramatic works in Salzburg, the Lentern sacred Singspiel Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots and the Passion cantata Grabmusik, the child Mozart was commissioned in 1767 for an opera for student performance by members of the Syntax class at the Benedictine University.  Here, as at other central European Catholic universities, there was a tradition for an end-of-term Latin drama on a religious or moral subject.  The resulting musical work was originally untitled: his father Leopold referred to it as ‘Music for a Latin Comedy’ in 1768, and it was only called ‘Apollo und Hyacinth’ by Wolfgang’s sister Nannerl in 1799 – as it is (most unusually) a Latin opera, its proper title should be Apollo et Hyacinthus.  In fact it was only a support feature, because it was intended to be performed between the acts of a far weightier work, a Latin play in five acts, Clementia Croesi, written by the Benedictine professor of the Syntax classes, Rufinus Widl.  Based on Herodotus, this story dealt with the accidental death in a hunting accident of the son of King Croesus.  Custom was that the lighter supporting musical work should consider a comparable theme, and so Widl turned to the mythological story of Apollo and the murdered Hyacinth, based mostly on Ovid, for the libretto for the opera.

The soloists for the première on 13 May 1767 were boys aged from 12 to 18, with King Oebalus performed by Matthias Stadler, a 22 year-old student in moral theology and canon law, and the music – as the Director of the Salzburg Gymnasium proudly recorded – was ‘composed by Wolfgang Mozart, a child of eleven, and delighted everyone, and at night he gave us notable proofs of his musical art at the harpsichord.’  Mozart’s name was already renowned across Europe as a prodigy virtuoso at the keyboard, but this was arguably his first significant achievement as a composer, even though by then he had written several symphonies, arias, piano music and violin sonatas.  Apollo et Hyacinthus already reveals a grasp of human character and motivation, allied to a language dependent on melodic beauty and rhythmic intensity.  One may suspect that the immensely talented Leopold Mozart may have ‘helped his son with his coursework’ on this occasion – it is hard to believe that the boy could have created such a compelling work unaided, and the work shows precocious sophistication, alternating recitative of unusually developed harmonic interest with freshly scored and dynamic musical numbers.  In fact, only a few months later in Vienna, Wolfgang’s second opera La finta semplice aroused suspicion of being written by his father. 

The original story of the jealousy of Zephyrus over the love between the god Apollo and Hyacinth had a triangular homoerotic nature which was clearly unpalatable to Widl and the educational purpose of the entertainment.  Consequently he introduced Hyacinth’s sister Melia as the object of Apollo and Zephryus’ rival love, although sufficient hints remain of the male desires of the original.

Attractively varied and eminently lyrical arias (usually da capo in form) abound, and Mozart made few concessions in technical difficulty to the youthfulness of his original singers.  The vanity aria for Melia which opens the second of the three short acts is characterized by jubilant virtuosity with demanding coloratura (the original singer was 15 year-old Felix Fuchs), and the powerful aria for Oebalus lamenting the death of his son is turbulent and relentless, likening his conflicting emotions to a ship tossed on the oceans.  In these the influence of Gluck seems clear, and the young Mozart must have had access to the French master’s music (they were to meet in Vienna the following year) although he was also probably influenced by Salzburg composers Eberlin and Adlgasser.  But the high points are two marvellous duets which suggest an understanding of character and motivation quite remarkable in a child composer.  In Act 2 an extraordinary conflict duet for the angry and indignant Melia and the pleading Apollo portrays the crossed purposes and misunderstandings of the couple with remarkable effectiveness.  In very different vein is the expressively intense Act 3 andante for Melia and Oebalus, a piece of remarkable sophistication and breathtaking beauty, scored for muted first violins against pizzicato lower strings which perhaps represent the limpid lyre-playing of the absent Apollo: here, possibly for the first time, we encounter that sublime introspection which characterizes the slow movements of some of the mature piano concertos, and in fact Mozart soon recycled this music for his Symphony K43.

Notwithstanding its brevity and the uncomplicated charm of its music, Apollo and Hyacinth depicts a whole operatic world in miniature and ranges through the widest array of moods and situations, encompassing serenity and virtuosity, comedy and tragedy, love, jealousy, death, forgiveness and reconciliation.  Recent professional productions have belied Charles Osborne’s opinion of 1978 that “the work is not really suitable for professional presentation [but] schools might care to remember it when looking for an end-of-term opera.”  The latter is certainly true, but in fact there is a moving depth of character and beauty in this work which makes it of value to professional performers and discerning audience alike.  It seems entirely appropriate that the child Mozart should have launched his incomparable operatic career with a celebration of the youthful Apollo, inventor of the lyre and god of music, in a work of endearing freshness and vivaciousness.

Synopses - Cast - Drinking tea in various attitudes of deep abstraction
Love, love, love is the soul of genius
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